Tag Archive for 'sports'

This design link is near and dear to my heart – The Boston Red Sox recently updated their team iden­tity and uni­forms. Over­all, I think it’s a pos­i­tive evo­lu­tion, though seems a bit nos­tol­gic. I love the gray pri­mary road jer­seys.

Replac­ing the old seal as the team’s offi­cial logo is the lone pair of red, hang­ing sox. Unless I’m wrong, there is no typog­ra­phy asso­ci­ated with it. None. No “Boston.” No “Red Sox.” If that’s the case, this is one of the best cases of visual iden­tity and brand equity becom­ing so strong the icon doesn’t need expla­na­tion. They are sox. They are red. They can not be any­thing other than the Boston Red Sox.

“Don’t boo me when I come back,” the defense­man said this after­noon shortly after being traded to the San Jose Sharks.

It’s tough being a small-market sports fan, espe­cially when the sport in ques­tion is hockey. For all the talk of par­ity in the NHL, it’s clear that there are two classes of teams – those will­ing to spend money to acquire and retain top tal­ent, and the Buf­falo Sabres.

The Sabres suf­fered los­ing their two top cen­ter­men to free agency last off-season, after post­ing the best record in the NHL and their sec­ond East­ern Con­fer­ence Cham­pi­onship loss in a row. One can argue about front office mis­takes in not sign­ing Briere and Drury, but in the end, it was their turn to cash in on a big con­tract, and Buf­falo was unwill­ing or could not afford to pay. (Let us not for­get also that the Sabres were up against the salary cap all of last season.)

And now we have a home-grown NHL super­star in Brian Camp­bell – two-time All Star, spin-o-rama skater, and open-ice hit­ter of R.J. Umberger – now due his big pay day at the end of this sea­son, as he becomes eli­gi­ble for free agency. What are the Sabres to do?

Well, the only move is to trade him. The Sabres could not risk los­ing him for noth­ing, and Camp­bell and his agent seemed luke warm about sign­ing some­thing before the trade dead­line. I cer­tainly can’t blame either party.

But, I can feel sad. Being a fan of a small-market team is tough, and I’d be lying if I weren’t a lit­tle jeal­ous that the Rangers or Ducks can just go buy whomever they want every year. In Buf­falo, we have to make our own stars.

After the jump, some high­lights from Soupy’s career in Buf­falo, includ­ing some of his hilar­i­ously hor­ri­ble local tele­vi­sion commercials.

This morn­ing, Lisa and I had lunch with her Grandma and Grandpa, who vis­it­ing this week­end from Buf­falo. Grandpa Dick is a retired pro­fes­sional wrestler, who used to be quite big in Japan. In addi­tion to win­ning numer­ous wrestling titles, the masked “Destroyer” was a star on the most watched com­edy show in Japan’s tele­vi­sion his­tory, along with Wada Akiko. But he also was famous in the West – Deb­bie Harry of Blondie sported some camel-toe in a t-shirt from Dick’s bad guy alter-ego, Dr. X… Hott.

So, we ate a ton of Japan­ese food while Dick enter­tained the chefs and wait­staff with his antics and Japan­ese lin­guis­tic skills. The shot above is of a Japan­ese newspaper.

More pho­tos, and a video of The Destroyer wrestling a bear, after the fold.

I am an avid hockey fan, since I was a kid grow­ing up in Buf­falo. I love watch­ing the game, and I espe­cially love watch­ing my home­town team, the Sabres. For the past 2 years, I’ve forked over $150 to sub­scribe to the NHL Cen­ter Ice cable pack­age, so that I can watch every game of the sea­son. With our TiVo, I can record each game, and watch it when­ever I have time.

That is, I did, until this sea­son started. We recently upgraded our TiVo unit from an old Direc­TiVo, to the new Series 3 TiVo HD, which appar­ently imple­ments unnat­u­rally strict copy pro­tec­tion on pre­mium con­tent. Because the new unit uti­lizes Cable­Cards, TiVo has dif­fer­ent rules for these TiVos as com­pared to Series 2 units, accord­ing to their sup­port page:

Since the Series3 and TiVo HD are DCR devices, in addi­tion to the Macro­vi­sion rules for ana­log con­tent, they must also com­ply with the con­tent pro­tec­tion poli­cies for Dig­i­tal Cable content.

What this means is that NHL Cen­ter Ice con­tent is copy pro­tected, and will be deleted within hours of the game’s com­ple­tion. Gone. Irretrievable.

We’re head­ing home to Buf­falo for the hol­i­day, (and my 10-year High School reunion), which reminds me of how well the Sabres are playing.

ESPN’s John Buc­ci­gross com­pares the Sabres to the brit­pop Oasis of all things:

At full strength, the Buf­falo Sabres are unequiv­o­cally the best team in the NHL. Not only do they have the full com­ple­ment of parts, but Buf­falo has that con­fi­dence that Oasis had when they went head-to-head with Blur back in 1995 in a Brit­pop mano a mano, or more accu­rately called boyo-a-boyo.

Noel Gal­lagher said he and Oasis’ soul was more pure than Blur’s because they grew up poor, with dirt under­neath their fin­ger­nails, while Blur was mid­dle class. The con­cept is inter­est­ing, espe­cially when it is spo­ken with a rough Eng­lish accent while sit­ting in a gigan­tic and expen­sive chair.

But Chris Drury, who grew up in a middle-class town in south­ern Con­necti­cut, makes $3.1 mil­lion this sea­son and prob­a­bly will sign a five-year, $22 mil­lion con­tract with some­one next sum­mer. And yet, he plays every game like some­one kid­napped his entire fam­ily and the ran­som is win­ning the face­off he is about to take. That’s the story, morn­ing glory.

I may not agree with John’s take on the 90s Brit­pop war, but it’s hard to argue with his thoughts on Drury.

It’s play­off time for the NHL, (though you’d never know it here in Boston), and I am lov­ing what I see in my Buf­falo Sabres. They’re up 2–0 in the best-of-seven series with the Fly­ers, after a bril­liant double-overtime win Sat­ur­day, and an 8–2 rout last night.

I do feel bad for the guy, and I’m not cheer­ing for injury. But that is just great play­off hockey, and a big rea­son why Buf­falo is up 2 games to none. And, Philly seems to be com­ing unglued. One Buf­falo colum­nist com­pares Philly Coach Hitch­cock to Con­fed­er­ate Gen­eral Pick­ett:

You remem­ber Pick­ett? He was the gen­eral ordered to march his troops uphill through open fields on the final day of the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg. Union sol­diers, strung across Ceme­tery Ridge, picked them off in droves. The Con­fed­er­ates never had a chance.

The Fly­ers might as well come out for Game Three dressed in gray and whistlin’ Dixie. They’re no match for the team they are up against. Speed is the Sabres hill, their posi­tion of supe­ri­or­ity, and Philly lacks the artillery to mount a mean­ing­ful counter.

Let’s not get cocky now… TV cov­er­age is spotty, but you can check out Game 4 on April 28 @ 10:00pm ET, on OLN.

My alma mater Boston Uni­ver­sity clinched the Hockey East Cham­pi­onship this past Sat­ur­day, win­ning in 2–1 OT against Boston Col­lege. Now, they’re off to the NCAA tour­na­ment, ranked #1 in the nation. They haven’t done that since 1997, when I was a sopho­more, and had noth­ing bet­ter to do on Fri­day nights than go watch the games.

And, if that wasn’t enough, a guy who played on that 1997 team, Chris Drury, is cap­tain­ing my home­town Buf­falo Sabres this sea­son. They’re near the top of the con­fer­ence stand­ings, and one of the most excit­ing young teams to watch. We’ve got seats at the Gar­den for Sat­ur­day night’s matchup with the Bruins.

It already seems like a dream—the Red Sox reversed the 86-year curse, by sweep­ing the World Series on Wednes­day night, and I haven’t posted yet. I gotta say, it’s been a great thing for this town, and for its decades of great teams that just couldn’t win it all.

Schilling, Pedro, DLowe, Ortiz, Manny, Foulke… all heroes. Can’t wait to great them at the parade tomorrow.

This is Kerry coun­try, Curt. We love the way you pitch, and we put up with all your “I love Jesus” talk, but nobody cares if you’re for low­er­ing your own taxes, and not every­body else’s. Keep that to yourself.

My heart felt as if it would explode tonight, as the Red Sox&Yan­kees again took it to extra innings, in Game 5.

David Ortiz came through huge (again) tonight for the Sox, and we’d prob­a­bly be talk­ing about an MVP award at this point, except for the fact that the Sox lost the first 3 games in the series.

But, we’re through to Game 6, and I’m encour­aged by the pitch­ing (start­ing and bullpen) in the past two games. The big ques­tion is, can Curt Schilling pitch well tomor­row, with the ten­don injury and the high-top cleat? I sure hope so.

I really am tempted to write a Slate–like cranky crit­i­cism of the new Buf­falo Bills uni­forms, but I will try to say some nice things: The dark blue is great. I like the stripes with the gray on the helmet.

(Here comes the cranky part) So, if you’re going to make an “update” with the new darker blue, why would you keep the lighter royal blue? Wouldn’t it be nice to put the num­bers in red, or gray? or the new dark blue? Doesn’t that light blue look just as dated now as it did last year? Why do the white uni­forms have a blue bar on the shoulders?

And the logo—change the f*cking logo. I think the Sabres got the logo RIGHT. It’s tough, mod­ern and looks fuck­ing great on the front of the uni­forms. The Bills logo (much like the orig­i­nal Sabres jer­seys) is the bor­ing old abstract corporate-art that is a direct rip-off of that 1970s Buf­falo pro­pa­ganda “WE’RETALKING PROUD”. Talk­ing Proud? We’re talk­ing MISERY.

Let me tell you what I really think. In a move true to this nos­tal­gic age we live in, the Bills tried to pre­serve many ele­ments of the old uni­forms, while updat­ing the col­ors a lit­tle. The result? It’s an inco­he­sive mish­mash of styles and col­ors, try­ing to be every­thing to every­body and it fails all around. There is noth­ing intim­i­dat­ing about these jer­seys, nor is there any­thing “new”.

We’re off to Buf­falo for the long week­end, and I haven’t writ­ten in a while. The sox beat up on the yan­kees last night, and I hope they do it the rest of the week­end. Every­one in this town, (by that I mean the media), is talk­ing about how much Roger Clemens sucks, but he’s pitch­ing tonight. I wish I could watch the fans ride him… but alas, i’m off to the land of AAA-ball.

666 vis­ited this week, and it was good fun. We even played ten­nis, and I’m absolutely con­vinced that she will become an up-and-coming star. No doubt about it.

Con­grats to Canada, for their gold-medal hockey wins (both men and women). It was so much fun to watch all of these teams play, espe­cially this year, when the sabres absolutely suck. I think the Belarus-Sweden game was my favorite.

Any­hoo– it’s good for Canada to get a self-esteem shot in the arm, because they’re good people.

BU won. Such a great game– North­east­ern has quite a good team this year. Fun­nily, with 1:18 left in the game, the score tied, the pro­jec­tor sud­denly switches chan­nel to the Car­toon Net­work, and Scooby Doo. About 500 stu­dents started to holler and scream, and when some staff mem­ber ran to the booth to switch it back, BU had scored! What fuck­ing tim­ing! (More evi­dence that BU is satan.) just kid­ding. BU won 5–3 (with an empty-netter).